Fans of romantic YA and fans of dark retellings of fairy tales will want to check out The Sea Witch. The Sea Witch is both a YA retelling and prequel of The Little Mermaid. It abounds in fantasy and plot twists and romance, although it’s quite clear from the outset that this book will NOT have a happy ending. A cool ending, yes. A weirdly satisfying ending? Sure. A happy ending? Nope.

The story takes place in Havenestad, a small fishing community. Most of the story is told by Evie, in first-person, present tense narration, but some is told in flashback from third-person point of view.

My fellow Bitches, I’m not gonna lie – I have just about had it with first-person, present tense narration. It’s not an automatic turn-off for me. I think it can serve a purpose in conveying immediacy and urgency and letting us in the narrator’s head. But I keep finding it being used not as a storytelling tool but as something that’s just part of YA. I love YA because the genre does so much with diverse characters and amazing plots and concepts, but the overuse of first-person, present tense is killing me!

Anyway, Evie is a commoner (her term) while her best friend Anna and their friend Nik are upper-class (Nik is a prince). They spend all their time as children at the ocean, and one day Anna drowns. Over the years, Nik and Evie are allowed to stay friends because of reasons but the community, both members of royalty and commoners, disapprove of Evie, seeing her as an upstart and therefore bullying her. It’s always clear that Nik and Evie can only be friends because Nik will eventually marry another royal, and they are always haunted by the memory of Anna.

Four years after Anna drowns, a new girl shows up. Evie is stricken by how closely this girl, named Annemette, resembles Anna. Annemette swears to Evie that she’s not Anna, but eventually reveals that she is a mermaid who has one week to get Nik to fall in love with her. Evie can’t let go of the feeling that she failed to save Anna once and can’t bear to fail Anna, or Annemette, again, whether they are the same person or not. Evie has an ability to use magic (which is strictly forbidden in Havenestad), and she wants to use this to help Annemette. But Annemette won’t allow it, leaving Evie to try to throw Annemette and Nik together as much as possible while dealing with her own feelings for Iker, a prince who has shown up for the yearly festivities. Like Nik, Iver can never marry Evie, but he flirts with her anyway.

This is a slow book in which most of the stuff that actually happens takes place near the end of the book, when suddenly there’s a huge plot reveal (which was AWESOME) and then a bunch of other plot reveals and some violence and then the end. It’s all very melodramatic. There’s a lot of romantic angst, and pretty clothes and cool ocean stuff. The book sets up interesting mysteries and eventually explains them in unexpected and inventive ways.

The parts of this book that I found both most frustrating and most interesting involved the use of power. Evie’s community used to burn witches and has a yearly festival in which they burn dolls dressed up as witches. Yet the fact that Evie’s aunt, Tante Hansa, is a witch is an open secret, with people going to her for cures. Instead of teaching Evie about magic, Tante Hansa pretends not to notice Evie stealing magic books and supplies. Shame on you, Tante Hansa. Evie grows up understanding the concept that to get something you must give something, but she doesn’t understand the concept of unintended consequences, which proves to be a tragic problem.

Evie’s power is forbidden, so it’s secret. Evie is untaught, so her use of magic is irresponsible, and it’s being used by a teenager who feels powerless in other ways, so it’s often motivated by pride. Evie is a fundamentally good person who is let down by Tante Hansa, who won’t teach her, and Nik, who won’t stand up for her, and Iker, who will never marry her, and Annemette, who is curiously passive about wooing Nik, and her community, who shuns her. I spent a lot of time wanting to smack people in this book – even, sometimes, Evie, who can’t or won’t just get the heck out this place where everyone fails her.

Because of the pacing and because of Evie’s frustrating situation, I found this book to be a frustrating one. However, I was enchanted by the descriptions of the city and the palace, and the ocean and the caves and rocks around it. It’s a good exploration of class, gender, power, friendship, and grief. And yes, there’s a ball, at which everyone looks amazing. This book has plenty of room for improvement, but I will happily read the sequel, which is expected to come out on August 6.